ServiceNow: Building Powerful Workflows

Knowing what's happening

Once you've clicked the Update button, the instance gets busy. Behind the scenes, the application server is running SQL commands against the database. Specifically, at the time of creating the field, the following is executed:

ALTER TABLE x_hotel_check_in ADD `comments` MEDIUMTEXT

If you wish to see these commands, navigate to System Diagnostics > Debug SQL. This will place lots of information at the bottom of the page. Other diagnostic tools such as this are discussed in Chapter 8, Securing Applications and Data.

This demonstrates a key concept: whenever you perform an action in ServiceNow, it results in a string of database commands. The database is altered and the platform's internal state is updated. These actions ...